The winds of woe look quite happy to me,

They say cheers, I gaze with glee,

Their dances synchronized since birth,

Since the spawning of the Earth,

I look down, but I am above,

When I looked up, I was still below,

But the wind was not stupid, you see,

It could see I was not happy,

It boost up angrily into the cloudy sea,

It took something with it.

Me.

but the ferocious wind was creating holes as it went,

Holes in time, anger well spent,

The past, the present, the future unfold,

Desperately waiting for the brave and bold.

By the time you are reading this, I will have completed my research for Frankenstein’s project and be moving on to the presenting phase. I have chosen three explorers to work on which changed the world’s view on, well, the world, and three scientists who greatly changed what people thought made up the world. It was not too difficult, as there were many adequate sources online to fulfill my need for information. I am going toward the presentation method, Prezi, which is a fun tool that is more than a regular power point. I will continue telling you about how my creation is going. I just hope it ends up how I want it  to. 

With kind regards,

-Danyal Bokhari

In our Language Arts class, we are coming to the final act of our Frankenstein unit. To finish it off, we have to work on a multi -media project on the book. To guide us, we have the choice to choose one of three research questions:

• What spurs people to go into the unknown?
• what are the ethical considerations in creation and recreation of human beings?
• Can we-and should we- change to fit society’s expectations?

Since I am the most famed explorer on the planet and beyond, I chose the first essential question. I am the type of person that jumps off of a cliff without knowing whether it is bottomless or not, much like the people I am going to research. However, I could not have jumped right into researching. I didn’t have a research question. I thought it would be difficult, like in humanities class, but I acquired a good one in around five minutes, with the help of Mrs.  Taynton. Here it is:

Why and how did medieval and modern explorers and scientists push the boundaries and go into the unknown?

Yes, that was all well and good. However, that was not narrow enough just by itself. The inquiry points needed to kick in. The inquiry points guide where the research question goes. Mine are here:

Inquiry point 1: Who were these people, what did they do, how did they do it?

Inquiry point 2: How did people react to their findings, what were the costs of their findings, how are the things they did important today? How are some of them similar to characters from Frankenstein?

We always need to connect to our main focus, which is the Frankenstein book. Now that I had formulated a research question, and two inquiry points to guide that, I was ready to research. I haven’t begun yet, as I need to document the process that goes along with creating our project. The blog posts I post will keep everyone up to date on the mishaps and wonders I come across in my journey to create Frankenstein’s project.

Felicia laid out bird food onto the trunk, and could see that the eagle was holding her yellow scarf back. The eagle looked down at the food, and then looked at Felicia. “Really?” He asked. He was unimpressed with her negotiation skills. “I’d rather die of hunger than take your prize.” Felicia’s countenance switched from worry to anger, and so she walked right up to the bird, without fear. She looked it right in the eye, walked between it’s legs, and picked up her yellow scarf. “I’d rather be deaf than listen to your nonsense” She says to him, and leaves.

Humpty Dumpty rode into battle on his horse. He roamed the many astounding walls surrounding Mr. Riverend’s fortress. The king’s men were sending letters  as if they were damsels in distress, so Humpty couldn’t help but go be heroic again. It wasn’t long before he saw the king’s men falling of the fortress walls, but he had already planned ahead and placed mattresses around the walls of the fort. His horse let out a tiny chuckle after it saw his previous owner, one of the king’s men, fall onto  one mattress in the most entertaining pose. Even Humpty cracked up too.

It is amazing how the beat of a drum can make even eating a bowl of cornflakes more exciting. It bursts out a roar louder than a lion and shudders the arctic until the glaciers melt into nothing but plain water. I remember how I danced the first time I heard its eternal war cry echo throughout my house. I love how my heart joins it in it’s romantic booms and it vibrates as the very atoms in my body implode at the sound of music. My ears burst at the sights and sounds of the mighty drum’s bursting, booming ballads.

They tell me I’m delusional, and a little overambitious. But that shows how boring they are. I don’t care for logic in this quest for my own “gold”. My shine and my life, buried deep within the many series of forests in the Pakistani countryside. The trees tower over me and make me feel a little smaller than I should, but it doesn’t stop me from keeping that one bounce in my step as I walk. As they say for gold, X marks the spot. But this gold is too beautiful to be marked. I am looking for my kidnapped wife. My only love.

My reflection on our work on The Merchant of Venice

Unit four reflection

The Merchant of Venice is a play written by William Shakespeare, and it was first released to the public in around 1596 or 1597. It featured a Merchant, who had a debt to settle with a greedy Jew called Shylock, and how if the Merchant did not repay, the Jew would cut a pound of flesh off of his body. It featured tragedy and sometimes comedy and it reflected the way Jews were shown to be at the time. Greedy and good for nothing money lenders. That’s not true, of course, but it was seen as the typical Jew attitude back in Venice during the time. We had to write an essay in language arts class, which showed how much we sympathized with the main Jew, Shylock, who did many bad things in his life but was also a victim to many bad things. It wasn’t easy, and in many ways, I felt stuck. I had to use different skills to work on my essay and make it efficient, and I’d like to tell you how I handled it and what I found difficult.

Connect

When I was reading this play, I was getting many familiar feelings throughout. I felt prejudice. As a Muslim, I know how all the Jews in this movie felt. Muslims are usually bashed around for, well, being Muslim. The Jews in this movie were bashed around for being Jewish. I could relate to the pain that those millions of Jews were feeling then because that pain is what millions of Muslims are feeling today.  This also made me a little more interested in the topic, which more enhanced the quality of my essay. It also provided more ways to help me sympathize with Shylock the Jew, as it was quite a long essay.

Extend

Before I started The Merchant of Venice, I was a little confused about the way justice worked. I thought of it as a man just going to prison. But now I know that justice is created from a person’s viewpoint on something. I learnt that if a person despises a criminal due to a personal experience, then their idea of justice would be different than a person that has never been experiences with a criminal. This is what happened in this movie. Christians hated the Jews, and their view of justice for the Jews was changed because of personal and religious background, changing the way they were treated in court. This is same for African Americans that were discriminated in America in the early 1900’s, as they did not receive proper justice either.

Challenges

There was one huge challenge that I had to overcome. The way I thank challenged me. I’m usually the kind of boy that goes into his own world and comes up with crazy stories to let people have a good time. For this essay, I had to change that thinking method into a more analytical way of thinking. It was difficult, as in the morning I am usually creative, and have to switch from that mood into a more critical, analytical mood. It is challenging to be something different from what you were just a second ago, and that hounded me for a long time. However, with help from many teachers and other students, I got enough feedback to make my thinking more analytical than before and leave the creativity out of it.

Thank you for reading! By the way, here is a link at the bottom that leads you to an imdb page which tells you a lot about the Merchant of Venice movie, which was released way back in 2004.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379889/?ref_=nv_sr_1

My Passion Project is coming toward its final chapter, and I think it’s right on time. May 8th is just around the corner (kind of) and its been fun. I started around a month ago, and have 240 pages now and seventy thousand words. It’s not my plot, but its still a very, very good one. Since we’re so close, I have a small “trailer” that the creators of the game made, that will let you see what the game I am writing is about, and what to expect in The Last of Us. Remember, its for mature audiences, so try to be a little over ten for this one.

If you have a VPN, watch this one:

If you don’t, watch this one by pasting it into your URL bar:

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNjUzNjUxNjI0.html

When I was walking up to present my passion project proposal, I had many thoughts in my mind. Will these children and adults sitting in the audience like what I tell them? My passion project is to show a video game plot through the use of literature. When I started talking, I tried to keep my voice at a consistent tone and be loud, while also keeping my words interesting. When I started talking about what I would do, people became interested. They knew that video games are long, and that it would take many words to sum it up. And when I told them I had already advanced to forty five thousand words and one hundred and eighty pages, they all became impressed by my determination. They all wondered about how I would do it, but I told them I had everything I needed to turn the plot of the game into literature. I have fun with video games, and especially loved the one I am writing about, The Last of Us. If you want to know more about the game, here is a link that you could paste into your URL bar. However, I recommend you keep yourself spoiler free, because this game’s story is impeccable, and one thing a first timer would adore.

http://thelastofus.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_of_Us